Thursday, July 5, 2012

First Burqa now Circumcision : The Europe's Madness

A court in Germany ruled recently that religious circumcisions of minors who cannot give their consent to the procedure are illegal. The judges at the Cologne state court argued that such practice violates the individual’s rights to self-determination and to physical integrity, both granted by Germany’s basic law (its constitution, so to speak).

THE TRIAL was initiated after a four year old Muslim boy needed to be treated at an emergency room of a Cologne hospital for post-circumcision bleeding.

The medic in charge at the emergency room reported the case to the prosecutor’s office that pressed charges against the physician who conducted the circumcision.

Even though the court found that the doctor conducted the circumcision accurately from a clinical point of view it ruled that the procedure itself was illegal, as there was no medical indication for it.

Personally I don’t agree that circumcision really violates the spirit of the constitutional principles stated by the court. It is certainly true that circumcision irreversibly removes a part ofthe human body, what the judges consider an insult to the principle of bodily integrity. Yet, circumcision does not cause injury in the sense of damaging, depriving or limiting a man in his physiological functioning.

A man who has been circumcised has no practical physiological disadvantage whatsoever over a man who has not been circumcised.

Rather, the opposite is true. It has been shown that circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection; circumcised men are at lower risk for genital cancer, and there are obvious hygienic advantages.